


Juno Steel and the Thief In the Night

by onetiredboy



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Art Attached, But also in love, Feels, Juno is in love, M/M, Set after the season 1 finale, a fix it fic........ Of Sorts, and hurting, and peter is hurting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-25 22:23:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20919581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onetiredboy/pseuds/onetiredboy
Summary: I stumbled into my apartment. I was so tired my knees felt weak, my remaining eye feeling heavy in my socket and only emphasising the absence of the second. There was a case I’d been working on… it felt so long ago now I barely even remembered the details, but I’d been awake for days on end. Days and days…My hand felt blindly for the light switch and after a moment, light filled the room. And I felt my heart stop.“Hello, Juno. Miss me much?”





	Juno Steel and the Thief In the Night

**Author's Note:**

> CaptainMarbles and i on the tpp discord server had the same braincell and decided to both write versions of this fic... i was like 'ill get mine done in like a month' and then was hit by nureyev loving hours and wrote it all in an hour. if you enjoy, leave kudos & comment!!!
> 
> art by Wolfy_the_Illusionist who is SO talented oh my god i YELL

I stumbled into my apartment. I was so tired my knees felt weak, my remaining eye feeling heavy in my socket and only emphasising the absence of the second. There was a case I’d been working on… it felt so long ago now I barely even remembered the details, but I’d been awake for days on end. Days and days…

My hand felt blindly for the light switch and after a moment, light filled the room. And I felt my heart stop.

“Hello, Juno. Miss me much?”

It had been… months. Seven months and twenty-two days, exactly, not that I was keeping count. Seven months, twenty-two days and four hours, if you really had to know.

“Nureyev,” I heard the word fall out of my mouth without really registering that I had spoken.

He was sitting on the table I have dinner at on the days I can be bothered to cook. His cattish eyes blinked slowly at me, a flash of his sharp teeth poking from between his red lips as he smiled, “Thought you’d be pleased to see me.”

“I—I—I—” I stumbled for the words. There was something about the way he was looking at me that was off. The way his eyes were more sharp than soft, the way his smile was more mocking than pleased. I felt my back press up against the wall, “Nureyev, let’s just talk—”

“Talk? My dear detective, what on Mars is there to _talk_ about?” His voice was the kind of soothing people’s voices usually are just before they pull a knife out and casually begin filing their nails with it. I searched him for some kind of weapon. His smile broadened.

“Oh, _Juno_. You don’t think I’m going to _kill _you, do you?”

“Why else would you be here?” I growled, “You must’ve figured I was too cowardly to do it myself and come to lend me a hand.”

“I’m only doing business in the neighbourhood, Juno. I’ve heard some… _unsettling _things about some of your recent cases. I thought I’d check in.”

“You’re here to _check _on me?” I looked him up and down. His smile dropped at one corner.

“You’ve made your opinion of me quite clear, Detective Steel. I only thought I’d come to see if the rumours are really true. After all, if they are, it does serve to make my job here much easier.”

Nureyev stood up from the table, long legs in tight pants and an open white blouse. The gold of his earrings almost brushed his shoulders. He folded his arms and glanced out of the window and for a moment he looked like a fucking million-cred painting.

Then he cleared his throat and uncrossed his arms. “I can tell things haven’t changed. Never mind. I hadn’t expected them to.”

“Nureyev—”

“Don’t bother, Juno.”

The way he said my name… So hard and cold that he didn’t even need to say my last name for me to hear it in his voice. There was a moment of silence. Nureyev cleared his throat again and made for the window.

“Nureyev—”

He didn’t turn. I took a step towards him, “Nureyev,” No response. My voice cracked when I shouted again, “Nureyev! _Peter!_”

He stopped. One ring-covered hand on the windowsill. A stiffening of his shoulders. From the back he looked more like I’d hit him than changed his mind but I couldn’t afford to think of that now. I couldn’t let him slip away, not again. Not when I’d played a moment like this out in my head a million different times.

“Peter, I’m _sorry_. I made the wrong choice. I thought I wasn’t ready to get hurt again but ever since that night all I’ve been doing is _hurting_. I think about you all the time, I—I can’t _stop, _every time I see a couple together all I can think about is what I did. And you’re angry at me, I get it. I get it, Nureyev, I am so, _so _angry too. I don’t know if I can ask you to trust me like you did back then again, but—Nureyev, damnit, I want to give you a reason to try.”

While I was talking, he turned slowly to face me. He leaned back against the windowsill. His sharp eyes stared into me, his face unreadable. When I stopped talking he drew himself to his full height and pulled his arms in close to his chest. After a moment, he sighed.

“I’m not… angry,” he said.

“Bullshit. It’s _okay_, Nureyev, you can _be _mad about it—”

“I’m not angry,” Nureyev said again. “I was… hurt. For a while. But, Juno, at the end of the day I gave you a choice. I told you we could leave together, or I would leave alone. When I woke up I… realised you had changed your mind. But the choice, ultimately, was still yours.”

“It’s not just that, Nureyev, it’s not—”

“Oh, I know, Juno.”

He put one heel up on the wall beside him and leaned against the sill again. For a moment, there was a thin smile on his face. For a moment, he looked… tired. I had never seen Peter Nureyev anything but resplendent before_. _For just a second, he didn’t seem like some angel out of my reach. He just seemed… human.

“I thought about it a lot. People do things for reasons, after all, and the kind of hurt you caused me couldn’t have been for a small reason, detective. At first I thought you had simply wished to use me, but that didn’t make sense. You’re far too sentimental, after all. And far too insecure to have the kind of night you had with me with just anyone.”

It… didn’t feel fair to be offended at that, considering how hurt he was. I battled with the feeling for half a moment, and then let it drop.

“It became clear to me that you, my dear detective, could never have left with me. You’re too tied down. You have far too many connections.” His heel slid off the wall, “Some part of me had just… hoped that ours was stronger than the rest of them.”

“Please don’t leave,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. I felt so useless saying that, like a broken record of every cheesy love movie ever written. I took a step towards him.

Nureyev didn’t run. He didn’t turn from me. I walked up to him slowly and all I saw was his eyes on me get softer. His fingers brushed over my hips like I was too fragile to properly touch. Like I might have shattered and disappeared from his life again.

“Nureyev,” I said. “I know it’s been a long time. I know I don’t… deserve it. But—”

“Yes,” Nureyev cut me off.

I frowned, “What?”

“You were going to ask if I still loved you, weren’t you?”

I felt my heart trip in my chest. I leaned forward, letting my forehead rest against his chest. My grin was so wide it hurt, but I could feel tears building up behind my eyes.

“Well. Maybe not love, quiet yet,” Nureyev continued, his arms curling around my waist. “But I’m willing to try again, Juno.”

I closed my eye and felt my shoulders shake. “I missed you,” I managed, my voice breaking open over the words and the first tear welling over my eyelid and down my face. “I missed you so much. I—Every day when I woke up alone, I had a moment of hating myself. God, Peter, the amount of times I dreamt about you—”

“I’m sorry, Juno.”

I leaned back from him and looked up, my shoulders still shaking as I tried to fight back my tears. I had to fight with my lungs for the ability to speak, so I just frowned at him and shook my head until I could, “For what?”

Peter smiled softly. Then he leaned down and kissed me.

It was… perfect. His lips were softer than I remembered them. My hands found their way to either side of his face and I knitted my eyebrows in concentration. The feeling was almost enough to make me start sobbing again: I hadn’t felt happy like this in seven months, twenty-two days, and four and a half hours.

He broke away from me after a moment and I… I was so dizzy that my eyes stayed close a moment longer. I blinked them open.

Peter Nureyev was in the open window. It took me just a moment to realise why, and I felt my heart leap into my mouth, “No—”

“I’m sorry for this, detective,” Peter said, and he smiled. “If it helps, I wish it could have worked out. I really do. I’m going to miss you. Maybe for the rest of my life.”

“Nureyev—_Peter, _don’t!” I ran for the window, but his slender fingers had dropped away from the sill before mine got there.

“Peter!” I called out the window, “Peter, don’t do this! Peter—”

And I saw him. Perched on a rooftop just a little while under mine. He smiled a sharp smile at me and laughed. “Don’t worry, boss. It’s only a dream, is all.”

And then he was gone.

“What? What did you say?! _Peter!_” I cried, hanging out of the window. My shoes slipped on the carpet of my apartment and I shrieked as I felt myself begin to tip over the edge.

“Ghh!”

I gasped. My chest was heaving and my heart was pounding hard against my ribs. It took me a moment to get my bearings as the world swam into light – my office. I was in my office. It took me a moment longer to realise my face was wet.

But what took the longest was the moment before I noticed that the door was open, and that Rita was standing in it.

There was silence for a long time. The shaken-up feeling was quickly draining away and embarrassment was already there waiting to take hold of me. I looked away from her. “What are you doing here, Rita?” I mumbled.

“That’s… the third time this week, boss,” Rita said quietly. I heard her walking over to me and squeezed my eye shut. If I did it hard enough, some part of me reasoned, I could squeeze her out of the room.

Her hand came to rest on my shoulder, “Are you sure you don’t wanna—”

I didn’t know what it was. Christ, I was tired. I was… upset. I had been having dreams like that for months, now, but this had been the most… realistic. The longest conversation I’d ever had in my dreams with him. So I was in a weird mood, I guess. Whatever it was… I reached forward without thinking and pulled Rita into me. My head hit her shoulder just before the train hit my lungs and I started to cry.

“Oh, Juno…” her fingers brushed into my curly hair and something about her not calling me ‘Boss’ or ‘Mista Steel’ reminded me of how deeply inappropriate my behaviour was for an employer. As quickly as I’d latched on to her, I pushed her away and stood up.

My shoulders still shook. I pulled my arms tighter to my body to hide it. “I’m going home,” I said. “Close up the office.”

“Mista Steel—” Rita started, but I was already on my way out the door. I couldn’t afford embarrassing myself like that again.

I went out. I wasn’t ready to sleep again, not that soon. I bought myself something to eat and forced it down my throat so that my body had no chance to start up that stupid, pathetic blubbering again. Then, to seal the deal, I found my way into a bar and put as many drinks down me as I could and still get home at the end of the night safely, and without any bad decisions following me into my bed.

And then… I stumbled into my apartment. My knees were weak with exhaustion. My one eye heavy in my head. I couldn’t remember the details of the case I’d been working on because I was too drunk to really remember anything.

I felt for the light switch. When my fingers found it, I… paused.

I spent a long moment in the dark like that. I was thinking about a lot.

I closed my one eye… and flicked on the light.

I waited. Then, slowly, I looked.

I didn’t know what I’d expected. My table was just how I’d left it when I walked out the door this morning. I knew that. I hadn’t thought I would see anything different. But I felt something heavy and wet settle deep into my chest anyway.

After a moment, I walked to the window and opened it. It was a smoggy, awful night. The pollution was so thick I could barely even see the rooftop just a little away from my building. There were no shadows for me to make out, no shapes moving in the darkness.

I wiped the tear out of my eye before it got any ideas. Then I closed the window and drew the blinds.

There was nothing out there worth seeing, anyway.


End file.
